The
Writer of the following article: Amy Davidson, appearing to be Jewish
by her name, is reporting on Charlie Hebdo with a bit of circumspection,
as the Weekly was known to be equally critical of Jews and Zionism. It
is an open question, who was the mastermind behind this horrific attack,
as since the attackers were named Muslims, the worldwide condemnation,
in a knee-jerk reaction will focus on Muslim extremists.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ghulam Muhammed <ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 8:38 AM
Subject: From newyorker.com: The Attack on Charlie Hebdo
January 7, 2015
Credit PHOTOGRAPY BY MARC PIASECKI/GETTY
In 2011, just six days after the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo,
a French satirical magazine under threat for having run cartoons of the
prophet Mohammed, was gutted by a firebomb, the staff put out a new
issue with a cover drawing of a bearded, presumably Muslim man kissing a cartoonist. The caption was “L’amour: Plus fort que la haine,”
which translates to “Love: Stronger than hate.” The cartoon was a
properly irreverent combination—an affirmation of the most universal
truth, a commitment to the magazine’s own very particular identity. To
be brave, one needn’t ever be saccharine. The magazine and its artists,
editors, and staff believed in all of that and lived those values, in a
way that few of us are ever asked to. At midday this Wednesday, ten of
them were killed, along with two Paris policemen who rushed to their aid
when what were reportedly two or three hooded men, armed with
AK-47s—some of the details are not yet clear—went into the office, in
Paris’s Eleventh Arrondissement, and started firing, apparently at
anyone they could find. In addition to the dead, twenty people were
injured, according to French police statements. There is a video
in which the gunmen can be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar”—God is great.
This was, as President François Hollande said after rushing to the
scene, “undoubtedly an act of terrorism.” And, though the exact identity
of the shooters will need to be determined, in these first hours there
are strong signs that it is an act of Islamist terrorism.
The
dead include Stéphane Charbonnier, who used the pen name Charb and was
the very brave editor of Charlie Hebdo; the cartoonists Jean Cabut (who
signed his work Cabu), Bernard Verlhac (Tignous), Georges Wolinski, and
Philippe Honoré; Moustapha Ourrad, a copy editor; the columnists Bernard
Maris and Elsa Cayat; Frederic Boisseau,
described as a building maintenance worker. Ahmed Merabet and Franck
Brinsolaro were police officers. Michel Renaud was visiting the office
when he was shot dead. (Vox has a list.)
They were assassinated. The gunmen were not on a suicide mission; they
fled and stole a car, which the latest reports suggest has been located
in the Twentieth Arrondissement. (The Guardian
and others have live updates; these include video clips of a
shoot-out.) The gunmen were still at large in Paris, as of the early
afternoon there, and presumably armed. Children were evacuated from
schools near the Charlie Hebdo office, which was in the same
building as at least one other media organization. Some workers in the
building managed to hide from the shooters, but it was, reportedly, a
production day at the magazine, busy and crowded. This was an attack on a
publication and a neighborhood, a country and its press, and on any
journalist, in any city. The magazine made fun of people—of many faiths,
for many follies, which we all need to be reminded that we have. Some
of the cartoons were blatantly, roughly sexual, and not designed to
endear them to Jews or Christians. Satire was Charlie Hebdo’s
mission, and a necessary one. There were times
when the French government
Recently, the magazine had mocked the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. The last tweet on the magazine’s account before news of the attack was of a cartoon of the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. As the BBC noted,
there are questions about its exact timing and provenance. But making
fun of al-Baghdadi is not recklessness; it’s how one knows that ISIS has
not won, and never will. There ought to be more tweets that do
so.* (Whether ISIS
in particular had a role in this attack is a question that can’t be
answered at this stage; its members are, sadly, not the only ones in the
terrorism business.) The current issue of Charlie Hebdo,
published the day of the shooting, featured a caricature of the
novelist Michel Houellebecq on the cover. Houellebecq’s new novel,
“Submission,” also out Wednesday, according to the Times, “predicts
a future France run by Muslims, in which women forsake Western dress
and polygamy is introduced.” The drawing of Houellebecq, accompanied by a
joke about Ramadan, is not flattering. The French police have added the
protection of Houellebecq to their list of priorities on what is, by
all accounts, a traumatic and disorienting day for the entire country.
He deserves safety, and not chastisement. Barack Obama, David Cameron,
and Angela Merkel have all quickly condemned the attack and the wider
assault on the press. The rector of Paris’s Grand Mosque added his
voice, saying, according to the Times,
“We are horrified. … Our community is stunned by what just happened.
It’s a whole section of our democracy that is seriously affected.”
France, it will be said in the next days, has failed, in a profound way, when it comes to making sense of its own diversity. What will be strongly debated is the nature of that failure, and what its opposite might look like. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, will, inevitably, offer one set of answers, with her characteristic, glossy coat on her much uglier injunctions that often add up to the same thing. Who in France, and in other countries, whose policies and commitment to a free press were, again, targeted in the attack on Charlie Hebdo, is going to come forward with other, better answers? This is a dangerous moment for France, both in the frighteningly immediate sense—there are armed terrorists loose in the capital—and because the decisions that a nation makes at a time of terror are not always the best ones, for anybody. “L’amour: Plus fort que la haine,” as Charlie Hebdo put it years ago—and what makes that line meaningful, and not some trite filler of empty air in a shot-up office—is remembering who you are.
*Clarification: The reference to the tweet has been revised to reflect questions about it.
From: Ghulam Muhammed <ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 8:38 AM
Subject: From newyorker.com: The Attack on Charlie Hebdo
In
2011, just six days after the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a French
satirical magazine under threat for having run cartoons of the prophet
Mohammed, was gutted by a firebomb, the staff put out a new issue with a
cover drawing of a bearded, presumably...
Continue reading at http://www.newyorker.com/news/
The Attack on Charlie Hebdo
By Amy Davidson
Credit PHOTOGRAPY BY MARC PIASECKI/GETTY
In 2011, just six days after the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo,
a French satirical magazine under threat for having run cartoons of the
prophet Mohammed, was gutted by a firebomb, the staff put out a new
issue with a cover drawing of a bearded, presumably Muslim man kissing a cartoonist. The caption was “L’amour: Plus fort que la haine,”
which translates to “Love: Stronger than hate.” The cartoon was a
properly irreverent combination—an affirmation of the most universal
truth, a commitment to the magazine’s own very particular identity. To
be brave, one needn’t ever be saccharine. The magazine and its artists,
editors, and staff believed in all of that and lived those values, in a
way that few of us are ever asked to. At midday this Wednesday, ten of
them were killed, along with two Paris policemen who rushed to their aid
when what were reportedly two or three hooded men, armed with
AK-47s—some of the details are not yet clear—went into the office, in
Paris’s Eleventh Arrondissement, and started firing, apparently at
anyone they could find. In addition to the dead, twenty people were
injured, according to French police statements. There is a video
in which the gunmen can be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar”—God is great.
This was, as President François Hollande said after rushing to the
scene, “undoubtedly an act of terrorism.” And, though the exact identity
of the shooters will need to be determined, in these first hours there
are strong signs that it is an act of Islamist terrorism. The
dead include Stéphane Charbonnier, who used the pen name Charb and was
the very brave editor of Charlie Hebdo; the cartoonists Jean Cabut (who
signed his work Cabu), Bernard Verlhac (Tignous), Georges Wolinski, and
Philippe Honoré; Moustapha Ourrad, a copy editor; the columnists Bernard
Maris and Elsa Cayat; Frederic Boisseau,
described as a building maintenance worker. Ahmed Merabet and Franck
Brinsolaro were police officers. Michel Renaud was visiting the office
when he was shot dead. (Vox has a list.)
They were assassinated. The gunmen were not on a suicide mission; they
fled and stole a car, which the latest reports suggest has been located
in the Twentieth Arrondissement. (The Guardian
and others have live updates; these include video clips of a
shoot-out.) The gunmen were still at large in Paris, as of the early
afternoon there, and presumably armed. Children were evacuated from
schools near the Charlie Hebdo office, which was in the same
building as at least one other media organization. Some workers in the
building managed to hide from the shooters, but it was, reportedly, a
production day at the magazine, busy and crowded. This was an attack on a
publication and a neighborhood, a country and its press, and on any
journalist, in any city. The magazine made fun of people—of many faiths,
for many follies, which we all need to be reminded that we have. Some
of the cartoons were blatantly, roughly sexual, and not designed to
endear them to Jews or Christians. Satire was Charlie Hebdo’s
mission, and a necessary one. There were times
when the French government Recently, the magazine had mocked the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. The last tweet on the magazine’s account before news of the attack was of a cartoon of the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. As the BBC noted,
there are questions about its exact timing and provenance. But making
fun of al-Baghdadi is not recklessness; it’s how one knows that ISIS has
not won, and never will. There ought to be more tweets that do
so.* (Whether ISIS
in particular had a role in this attack is a question that can’t be
answered at this stage; its members are, sadly, not the only ones in the
terrorism business.) The current issue of Charlie Hebdo,
published the day of the shooting, featured a caricature of the
novelist Michel Houellebecq on the cover. Houellebecq’s new novel,
“Submission,” also out Wednesday, according to the Times, “predicts
a future France run by Muslims, in which women forsake Western dress
and polygamy is introduced.” The drawing of Houellebecq, accompanied by a
joke about Ramadan, is not flattering. The French police have added the
protection of Houellebecq to their list of priorities on what is, by
all accounts, a traumatic and disorienting day for the entire country.
He deserves safety, and not chastisement. Barack Obama, David Cameron,
and Angela Merkel have all quickly condemned the attack and the wider
assault on the press. The rector of Paris’s Grand Mosque added his
voice, saying, according to the Times,
“We are horrified. … Our community is stunned by what just happened.
It’s a whole section of our democracy that is seriously affected.”France, it will be said in the next days, has failed, in a profound way, when it comes to making sense of its own diversity. What will be strongly debated is the nature of that failure, and what its opposite might look like. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, will, inevitably, offer one set of answers, with her characteristic, glossy coat on her much uglier injunctions that often add up to the same thing. Who in France, and in other countries, whose policies and commitment to a free press were, again, targeted in the attack on Charlie Hebdo, is going to come forward with other, better answers? This is a dangerous moment for France, both in the frighteningly immediate sense—there are armed terrorists loose in the capital—and because the decisions that a nation makes at a time of terror are not always the best ones, for anybody. “L’amour: Plus fort que la haine,” as Charlie Hebdo put it years ago—and what makes that line meaningful, and not some trite filler of empty air in a shot-up office—is remembering who you are.
*Clarification: The reference to the tweet has been revised to reflect questions about it.
Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.
